This morning, BBC boss Mark Thompson announced that the corporation’s long-awaited iPlayer on-demand TV service would launch, as an open public beta, on 27 July this year.
Unveiling details of the peer-to-peer download service, Thompson predicted that the iPlayer (nee iMP) would be “at least as big a redefinition of broadcast TV as colour TV was 40 years ago.”
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Listen to the Interview – [audio:https://digital-lifestyles.info/media/audio/adrian-westaway-magic-light-RCA-2007.mp3]
Adrian Westaway’s project, Magic Light, lets you guide a light to a different location merely by waving your hands in the direction you want to move the light.
The lack of ‘interface’ means that there’s no age restriction, as using it is as simple as moving your hand around.
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We attended the end of year show for the Royal College of Art (RCA) and were highly impressed with a lot of it.
While I personally thought that the fine art side of the exhibition was too safe and ultimately unexciting – it felt like they were all being too conscious of trying to ‘make it’ – the work in the Great Exhibition tent was very stimulating – bright minds tackling issues that are just ahead of current issues, and a few, a long way off.
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‘Green’ festival uses mobile tickets to save the world.
With the glorious … or was it gory-est … Glastonbury out of the way for at least another year (as well as the BBC’s over-coverage), the other festivals around the UK now have a chance of getting their messages out that 1) They’re on, 2) that they have everything that you heart desires.
Getting a new festival going these days is pretty hard as so many people are trying to do the same, realising that live music is where-it’s-at as people generally become ever-more atrophied by recorded music.
New festival, Two Thousand Trees, have a very ‘now’ idea, labeling it as a festival for ethical music fans – and a very worthy one it is in our book too. Beyond this they also have a much-to-be-supported goal of “not ripping people off and making sure everyone has an awesome time at our lovely festival.” Long may this ethos last.
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With the fortieth anniversary of the first ATM, or cashpoint as it’s known in the UK, the BBC has an interview with the man who came up with the idea, 82 year old John Shepherd-Barron (pictured).
He recounts that the original idea for the dispenser was chocolate bars – true currency in some people’s minds – but this was replaced with the far more profitable idea of dishing out money.
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Nintendo’s stock market valuation was briefly higher than Sony’s on the Osaka Stock Exchange this morning.
The combination of a record high for Nintendo’s share price and a drop for Sony lead to the strange situation.
Nintendo’s revenue is eight times smaller than Sony – not surprising when Sony’s empire spans so many different areas including, TV, music and film publishing.
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Interesting move by PlusNet, as they release a version of their broadband service tailored specifically towards Polish speakers.
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Quick catchup news. China has modified their content blocking – or Great Firewall of China as it’s sometimes called – to allow through the English language version of Wikipedia to be seen in China.
This change only took place at the beginning of this week. My experience the week before (while in Beijing), was that results were show in Google, but when clicking on the Wikipedia links, they would timeout with nothing displayed – classic firewall blocking behaviour.
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From the beginning of July, Vodafone UK is dropping the price of their Mobile Broadband service to £25 a month or a ‘designed to get you to take the monthly offer,’ £8.50 for 24 hours.
There’s also a new feature that gives the ability to continue data connections, while you’re in select European countries for £8.50 for 24 hours.
All of these prices exclude VAT.
They are pitching it as a real alternative to fixed-line broadband and Wi-Fi.
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With just over a week until the whole of humanity is saved and we shall never have to worry about disease again launch of the iPhone in the US, Apple have let it be known that they have been getting even closer to YouTube.
YouTube have been busily re-encoding lots of their videos to H.264 and the Apple iPhone (aka Mankind’s Saviour) will be the first phone to make use of them. The advantages to Apple is PR (You’re reading this) and the playback of H.264 should be more battery efficient, as it doesn’t need the whole of a Flash player to render the videos on the handset.
Over 10,000 video will be available on the 29 June (iPhone day) with all of the other videos following suit, it’s expected, by Autumn (Fall) this year.
By way of a lovely tie-up, it’s also the day that sees the YouTube on Apple TV go live – after they do the download update to their little boxes.